Repentance encompasses the major part of the Torah and life; upon it are based all the hopes of the individual . . . as well as the community. . . . This is the entire basis of repentance: ascent of will and its transformation to virtuousness, emergence from darkness to light, from the “valley of disturbance” to the “gateway of hope.”
—Rav Abraham Isaac Kook, The Lights of Repentance
For many years my wife and I have hosted a large family gathering in our home on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. You might call it a Rosh Hashanah seder with readings and songs. We begin with something I wrote in the mid-1990s:
The leaves begin to turn, summer fades, and we return—to school, to a heavier work schedule, to “reality,” as some would have it, and to a season full of Jewish holy days. These begin with Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the seventh month of Tishrei, the birthday of the whole world! During this time we return—to ponder how to improve our selves, our relationships, and our troubled world. . . . Our songs unveil the vision of the hidden world we seek. From the power of our joined voices, let us draw strength to rebuild it.1
The season from the late-summer Hebrew month of Elul through the High Holy Days provides the opportunity and the tools to fulfill what may be our greatest personal hope in life: to become the person we wish to be. Engaging in the process of teshuvah (repentance, or returning) may help each of us to become better versions of ourselves.
My own efforts to do teshuvah encompass three components. The first is contemplation of the key elements in what I call “A Theology for Looking in the Mirror.” This theology frequently dips into the thought of Rav Kook (1865–1935), the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Palestine under the British Mandate. The second is prayer, a key tool for laying conflicting hopes on the table for an honest assessment of their virtues. The third is the practice of rituals associated with the season of teshuvah: blowing the shofar, reciting Psalms 27 and 130, and reading the book of Jonah on the afternoon of Yom Kippur.
As we see in this chapter, each of these approaches bears a special relationship to hope.
When we take an honest look at ourselves, there’s almost always a divergence between our conduct and our ideals, a sense of falling short, of failing to be our best selves. Teshuvah involves the struggle to narrow that gap. Becoming aware of that disparity gives rise to a range of reactions—including shame, guilt, and despair, but also hope—hope that with sufficient effort we can change for the better.
Because teshuvah is so tightly bound to images of divine judgment, mercy, pardon, and so on, I’ve set this discussion in the theological framework that has worked for me. The essential point is that teshuvah aims to allow the divine image we all possess to exert greater influence on our behavior.
How we carry out teshuvah depends on what we are trying to improve.
If we’ve wronged someone, Judaism calls on us to acknowledge it and ask for that individual’s forgiveness. Maimonides clarifies that if we’ve asked for forgiveness three times and it has not been granted, “then the sin rests upon [the one] who refuses forgiveness.” Maimonides additionally explains what to do if someone dies before you’ve had an opportunity to ask for forgiveness: a graveside confession in the presence of ten adults and the repaying of any debts to the heirs of the deceased or to the community if there are no known heirs.2
But often the sense of failing to measure up doesn’t involve something specific we’ve done to harm someone. Striving to be our best self may have more to do with examining our relationships, priorities, and how we spend our time. For example, we may allow ourselves to become so busy with work that we don’t have time for community affairs. Or we become so devoted to community affairs that we don’t have enough time for family and friendships. Perhaps we have a sick relative or friend whom we visit, but not frequently enough. Or maybe we tend to get angry too easily, feel envious of the success of others, or find ourselves compulsively chasing the limelight. This dimension of teshuvah is difficult because it involves more than an isolated action. It touches on ingrained traits of character.3
We can at least take comfort from the fact that we deserve credit for working on these issues. As Maimonides says, one who has done teshuvah is on a higher level than one who has not sinned.4
Teshuvah also involves assessment of where we are on our spiritual journey, even if we don’t necessarily think of ourselves as “spiritual.” Where do we stand in relation to the values and principles to which we assign ultimate importance?
Hope is inseparable from teshuvah. Hope is the gateway to teshuvah because hope says we can change. Despair says we can’t.5 Teshuvah then furnishes the means to fulfill the hope that we can change, that the self we see in the mirror can grow or be repaired. The primary meaning of teshuvah, “return,” reminds us that once, maybe long ago, we were closer to our best selves, and that a kernel of that best self still resides within us. Getting back to it may be difficult, but knowing that we’ve already been there sustains a measure of hope that return is possible. Rav Kook puts it this way:
The principal repentance, which immediately illuminates the dark places, is the return of [one to one’s] self, to the source of [one’s] soul . . . and immediately [one] will return to God, the Soul of all souls and [one] will progress higher and higher in holiness and purity.6
For Rav Kook, teshuvah begins with a return to the core of goodness that resides within each of us, a spark we must and can recover.
I think about that return to self and God as connecting with the image of God within me that I want to guide my actions, but that I too often ignore or can’t seem to find. It reminds me of a story. When God decided to create humanity in the divine image, the angels feared the consequences of entrusting something so pure to a creature so susceptible to corruption. They resolved to steal the divine image. But where to hide it? On the top of a mountain? No. Men and women would eventually scale the summit and discover it. In the depths of the sea? No. Men and women would eventually plumb the depths and find it. So they hid it where no one would ever look: in the hearts of human beings. And that’s where it remains to this day.7 Teshuvah creates an opportunity to rediscover the spark of that divine image that lies hidden in our hearts.
I think about my very awareness of the gap between my actual and ideal selves as that inner divine image pressing for greater expression in my character, more influence in my decision making. The internal image of God speaks in a “still, small voice.” That is what the prophet Elijah learned: when God passed by him, he discovered God was not in the mighty wind, the splitting of mountains, the earthquake, or the fire, but in the “still, small voice” (1 Kings 19:11–13).8
God’s voice calls me to be better, to do better. The God within shares my hopes to make my life a better reflection of the divine image I bear.9 When I disregard God’s call, something feels wrong. I need to do teshuvah.
In Jewish thought, God shares our hopes to better reflect God’s vision, both individually and collectively. We see this in Rashi’s comment on “Hope deferred sickens the heart, but desire realized is a tree of life” (Prov. 13:12). In its context, the verse is clearly speaking about the individual, but Rashi reads it as applying also to the people Israel: “The hope that the Holy One had hoped for Israel, the hope that they would repent, ultimately brought Israel to heartsickness when they did not repent. When they fulfilled God’s desire, that hope was a tree of life to them.” Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–72, Poland and United States) put it this way: “God is in search of man, waiting, hoping for man to do His will.”10
Initiating the process of teshuvah simply involves acknowledging our shortcomings. Rav Kook likens that gnawing sense of discontent within us to a condensed inner “seed-like point” that achieves ever-greater radiance, reflecting the divine image within that is always seeking greater expression.11
Knowing that God shares our best hopes and yearns for us to fulfill them sets a positive cycle in motion. We may not love what we see when we take that first look in the mirror, but doing so puts us in touch with something deeply positive—our own divine image. That experience, in turn, strengthens our capacity to look inward, ever more deeply and honestly.
Teshuvah requires overcoming a natural sense of shame that arises from confronting our shortcomings. Since excessive shame can short-circuit the entire process, Rav Kook offers two observations to guard against this. First, the experience of shame may be an inevitable part of the process, but the ultimate goal of teshuvah is not to make us miserable. Suffering is not the means toward renewal. The aim of teshuvah, Kook says, “is not meant to embitter life but to make it pleasant.” Second, even though there may be times when looking inward seems to yield such an unmitigated negative self-assessment that you “can find no vestige of virtue . . . this fact in itself possesses great virtue.” Thus “it is impossible that one should not discover in oneself some share of virtue.” And so Rav Kook describes teshuvah as a process that leads to the “emergence from darkness to light, from the ‘valley of disturbance’ to the ‘gateway of hope.’”12
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810), a Hasidic master known to have suffered from depression, offers a different approach toward judging oneself less harshly. Commenting on the passage, “Be in the habit of judging people favorably” (Pirkei Avot 1:6), he says:
After honing this on others, we must then use it on ourselves as well, so that each of us can focus on the good within us, and thus make it less marginal and more central to who we are. . . . And by means of this, because we find in ourselves even a little goodness, we can truly move from being guilty to being meritorious and we will be enabled to engage in true teshuvah.13
As the door to teshuvah begins to open, we can begin to hear that divine inner voice of forgiveness—which may be a lot less harsh on us than we are on ourselves. When we look inside ourselves, we can choose, in some sense, to see the worst, which leads to despair, or to see the good, that inner point of good, God’s image, at our core.
What if we are deeply stuck in our ways and have been unable to change? Can it ever be too late to do teshuvah? As long you are alive, Jewish tradition maintains that teshuvah remains an option. Rabbeinu Yona of Gerona (d. 1263) made this point very clearly, and he knew of what he spoke. Author of The Gates of Repentance, a famous treatise on teshuvah, Rabbeinu Yona had been a zealous opponent of Maimonides, to the point of advocating the burning of his philosophical works—which the Inquisition carried out in 1232. According to tradition, some years later, when the Inquisition burned the Talmud, Rabbeinu Yona realized the error of his ways.14 This is what he said about Ecclesiastes 9:4: “One who is attached to all the living has hope (bitachon). . . . It means that one has hope that one can improve oneself. It is known and certain that living human beings are given a choice to choose the correct path. Therefore, as long as one is alive, there is hope that one can improve.”15
The Talmud recounts a tale of a rabbi said to have hired every prostitute in the world. He crossed seven rivers to visit one woman reputed to be especially beautiful. When he was with her she whispered that his teshuvah would never be accepted. This upset him so, he put his head between his knees and wept until his soul departed—whereupon a heavenly voice proclaimed that he was destined for eternal life in the world to come (his repentance had been accepted). Upon hearing this, Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi (leader of the Jewish community around 200 CE and compiler of the Mishnah) declared, “One may acquire eternal life after many years, another in one hour!”16
The scope of prayer encompasses the range of human emotion and experience, including expressions of gratitude, regret, awe, wonder, anger, and hope concerning ourselves, others, and the world at large. In the context of teshuvah, prayer provides first an opportunity for observing, and then a means of narrowing, the gap between the way we are and the way we could be. Although the High Holy Day liturgy focuses on this particularly, so does the regular weekday liturgy.
The fifth blessing of the weekday Amidah (recited three times daily) makes that perfectly clear: “Turn us back, in perfect teshuvah before You. Blessed are You, YHWH, who takes pleasure in teshuvah.” God wants and hopes for our teshuvah—and this is in fact one of God’s central qualities. God is a God who wants us to succeed in improving!
Of course, reciting a fixed liturgy is not essential for teshuvah. Any moment of heightened self-awareness can create an opening for teshuvah. A midrash from the fifth or sixth century describes God as Israel’s pool of hope (Mikveh Yisrael), always accessible. God says: “You are to pray in the synagogue in your city; when you cannot pray in the synagogue, pray in your open field; when you cannot pray in your open field, pray in your house; when you cannot pray in your house, pray upon your bed; when you cannot pray upon your bed, commune with your heart.”17
That said, I have found that prayer provides a special opportunity for looking inward to reflect upon and express a range of feelings—gratitude, confusion, regret, and, of course, hope—in the encounter with my deepest hopes about how I can be a better human being tomorrow than I am today.
I’ve begun to understand and experience prayer in this way since 2010, when I began attending a daily minyan (a quorum of ten Jews required for public prayer—who may be counted varies across denominations) after my mother died. Like any serious undertaking, prayer requires practice and discipline, both of which the morning minyan has provided in great abundance! Heschel put it this way: “Prayer is not a stratagem for occasional use, a refuge to resort to now and then. It is rather like an established residence for the innermost self.”18
The daily liturgy often refers to God as ha-Makom, literally, “the place.” For me, teshuvah-oriented prayer is the place for a dialogue with God on my deepest hopes about how to be my best self amid whatever challenges I’m facing. Sometimes I experience “the place” as outside, beyond me, but more often it feels like an internal place, the image of God within. Either way, prayer can be a daily exercise in teshuvah.
Heschel’s view of prayer similarly combines the themes of hope and teshuvah:
Prayer clarifies our hope and intentions. It helps us discover our true aspirations, the pangs we ignore, the longings we forget. . . . Prayer makes visible the right, and reveals what is hampering and false. In its radiance, we behold the worth of our efforts, the range of our hopes, and the meaning of our deeds. . . . The idea of prayer is based upon the assumption of [one’s] . . . ability to accost God, to lay our hopes, sorrows, and wishes before [God]. . . . Prayer is an answer to God: “Here am I. And this is the record of my days. Look into my heart, into my hopes and my regrets.” . . . “The highest form of worship is that of silence and hope.”19
In prayer I meet God not as a being that fulfills yearnings or grants forgiveness, but as a partner in sorting out my hopes and facing my regrets. In prayer I ask God’s help in assessing the worthiness of my deepest hopes. And I ask whether those hopes truly reflect my values, because not all hopes are equally justified, and not all hopes reflect our better angels. In the wise words of Proverbs, “The hope (tochelet) of the righteous shall be gladness; but the expectation (tikvah) of the wicked shall perish” (10:28).20 Improving the nature of our hopes may itself be a critical element of teshuvah.
Focusing our hopes on the kind of person we wish to be—thus excluding a raft of more trivial hopes—still does not eliminate the question of whether our hopes are worthy. As I see it, prayer should always leave room for a dialogue with God about the moral considerations surrounding Immanuel Kant’s famous question: “What may I hope?”21 I hear God’s answer to my prayer through that inner voice that tells me what’s worthy and what needs fixing. To immerse myself in prayer is to discover the hopes I share with God.
Even if our hopes are worthy, they still depend, as psychologist C. R. Snyder notes, on willpower, determination to reach a goal.22 Prayer thus becomes a place to ask God to help renew my resolve when it flags. That’s how I understand a verse from Isaiah: “But they who hope to YHWH shall renew their strength” (40:31).23 God doesn’t dispense perseverance pills. But I have found that recognizing my need for help and making it part of my prayer-dialogue with God is enormously strengthening to me. This may have been what the French philosopher and theologian Gabriel Marcel (1889–1973) had in mind when he wrote, “The zone of hope is also that of prayer.”24
The time of the year most closely associated with teshuvah, the forty-day period from the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul through Yom Kippur, corresponds to the period from when God called Moses to ascend Mount Sinai to receive the second set of tablets until he descended from the mountain forty days later.25 On the fortieth day, an exchange took place between God and Moses that included the thirteen Divine Attributes, which figure so prominently in the High Holy Day liturgy. (Some interpreters ascribe the declaration of the Divine Attributes to God and others to Moses.)
The mending that occurs over the period from the creation of the Golden Calf and the smashing of the first set of tablets to the receiving of the new tablets is a narrative about teshuvah. In turning to the Golden Calf, the Israelites fall far and fast. God’s angry disappointment nearly leads to their annihilation. With much persuasion by Moses, God and the Israelites both do teshuvah and return to a healthier place. God gives up the urge to destroy the Israelites, and the Israelites turn away from their idol-worshipping ways. The period from Elul to Yom Kippur stands as an archetype for the possibility of change. The second set of tablets represents the fulfillment of the hope for a second chance—back then and now too.
A medieval midrash takes this concept a step further, asserting that the second set of tablets was superior to the first. Moses tells God that he regrets having broken the tablets, and God tells him “not to worry”; the first included only the Ten Commandments, but the second also includes allusions that support the subsequent development of Jewish law and midrash.26 The midrash implies that after rapprochement, the fractured relationship between God and the Israelites was stronger than it had been before the Golden Calf.
In other words, we are to give heed to that “still small voice” that calls us to seek out those situations where we yearn for a second chance to make things right. The results might exceed our hopes.
The blowing of the shofar, the recitation of Psalms 27 and 130, and the reading of the book of Jonah underscore additional important connections between teshuvah and hope.
In its depiction of the holy day as a day of judgment, U’Netaneh Tokef, one of the principal prayers in the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgy, connects listening to the divine inner voice and the process of teshuvah with the sound of the shofar: “The great shofar will be sounded, and the still small voice will be heard.” The sound of the shofar can clear our heads so that we can actually hear that inner divine voice calling for greater influence in our lives.
This opportunity includes more than just the days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The shofar is customarily blown in synagogue every morning (except Shabbat) during Elul, the month that precedes Rosh Hashanah. Maimonides understood its purpose as containing an allusion:
Although the sounding of the shofar on the New Year is a decree of the Written Law, still it has a deep meaning, as if saying, “Awake, awake, O sleeper, from your sleep; O slumberers, arouse yourselves from your slumbers; examine your deeds, return in repentance, and remember your Creator. Those of you who forget the truth in the follies of the times and go astray the whole year in vanity and emptiness which neither profit nor save, look to your souls; improve your ways and works. Abandon, every one of you, [your] evil course and the thought that is not good.”
It is necessary, therefore, that each person should regard [oneself] throughout the year as if [one] were half innocent and half guilty and should regard the whole of mankind as half innocent and half guilty. If then [one] commits one more sin, [one] presses down the scale of guilt against [oneself] and the whole world and causes [one’s] destruction. If [one] fulfills one commandment, [one] turns the scale of merit in [one’s] favor and in favor of the whole world, and brings salvation and deliverance to all [one’s] fellow creatures and to [oneself].27
Maimonides sees the shofar as an alarm clock, first rousing us, then reminding us of the alarmingly profound choices we face. Our actions can change us and the world.
The message can be frightening—Maimonides puts awesome responsibility on our shoulders—but his message also encourages hope. He underscores the potential for change and that our actions have implications far beyond our awareness. Says the Talmud: “Great is teshuvah for it brings healing to the world.”28
Earlier I mentioned how we begin our family Erev Rosh Hashanah celebration. After reading Maimonides’ interpretation of the shofar, we conclude with the highlight of the evening, a ritual that may be unique to our family. We take turns giving reasons why we are blowing the shofar this year, and after every reason we blow our shofars as long and loudly as we can. “To give us strength to combat climate change!” “To open our ears to those crying for our help!” “To blow certain politicians out of office!” . . . It’s a long list of hopes for ourselves and the world. Between us we must have eight or ten shofars, so the sound definitely penetrates!
Another tradition that begins with Elul and extends through the High Holy Days (in some communities through the end of Sukkot) involves the morning and evening recitation of Psalm 27, a psalm that has a great deal to say about hope. The custom entered Jewish practice relatively late, in early eighteenth-century Eastern Europe,29 but long before that, the sages were struck by its unusual last verse: “Hope to YHWH. Let your heart be firm and bold, and hope to YHWH.” They saw the verse as an embodiment of the essential elements of prayer. The Talmud notes that prayer must be infused with strength and cites this verse, which literally revolves around hope, as its model for exemplary prayer. Rashi says this verse shows that in prayer one should not hold back, but hope and then hope again.30
The Talmud likewise uses the verse to teach that if our prayers are not answered, we should pray and pray again.31 It implicitly bases its conclusion on the fact that this verse instructs us to hope twice. In so doing, the Talmud points to an inseparable relationship between prayer and hope. Perhaps this accounts for injunctions in two medieval sources that this verse should be recited every day!32
Let’s take a look at the psalm:
1YHWH is my light and my help; whom should I fear? YHWH is the stronghold of my life, whom should I dread? 2When evil men assail me to devour my flesh—it is they, my foes and my enemies, who stumble and fall. 3Should an army besiege me, my heart would have no fear; should war beset me, still would I be confident. 4One thing I ask of YHWH, only that do I seek: to live in the house of YHWH all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of YHWH, to frequent [YHWH’s] temple. 5[YHWH] will shelter me in [YHWH’s] pavilion on an evil day, grant me the protection of [YHWH’s] tent, raise me high upon a rock. 6Now is my head high over my enemies roundabout; I sacrifice in [YHWH’s] tent with shouts of joy, singing and chanting a hymn to YHWH. 7Hear, YHWH, when I cry aloud; have mercy on me, answer me. 8In Your behalf my heart says: “Seek My face!” O YHWH, I seek Your face. 9Do not hide Your face from me; do not thrust aside Your servant in anger; You have ever been my help. Do not forsake me, do not abandon me, O God, my deliverer. 10Though my father and mother abandon me, YHWH will take me in. 11Show me Your way, YHWH, and lead me on a level path because of my watchful foes. 12Do not subject me to the will of my foes, for false witnesses and unjust accusers have appeared against me. 13Had I not the assurance that I would enjoy the goodness of YHWH in the land of the living . . . 14Hope to YHWH. Let your heart be firm and bold, and hope to YHWH.33
Note the stark contrast between the psalm’s initial faith in divine protection (v. 1–6) and its concluding plea for an answer from God and evidence of God’s goodness (v. 7–13). The shift in tone has led some commentators to conclude that the psalm is a composite of what had once been two completely separate compositions, a psalm of assurance followed by one of desperation.34 I share the view of others who argue that the psalm’s discordance reflects the complexity of human experience, which often includes both of these feelings, sometimes in quick succession. The contrasting moods may also correspond to different stages of life.
Psalm 27 contrasts the nature of faith versus hope as well. In his beautifully sensitive analysis, Edward Feld, author of Joy, Despair, and Hope: Reading Psalms, writes:
Rather than the brazen, “whom [should] I fear,” with its absolute faith, there is now the need to buck up courage, to hope. The poet of Psalm 27 has moved from pride to humility. Faith has been replaced by hope. Faith believes absolutely in its rightness. Hope understands that though the evidence is to the contrary, though there is much room for doubt, nevertheless, the faithful manage to live with expectation. Faith is brazen, hope is humble.35
My reading of the psalm imagines an individual searching for balance between the realm of worldly pursuits—with all its inevitable seductions and conflicts—and the inner quest for ultimate purpose. Initially the search involves the fantasy of finding a protector who can assure triumph whenever conflict arises. Next comes a dawning awareness that no one, not even God, can guarantee that outcome. This prompts a different, but equally unrealistic, solution: complete withdrawal from the trials of public endeavor, dwelling “in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.”
Between these extremes lies God’s way, the “level path,” the balance between worldly and spiritual pursuits. Who in our productivity-driven era does not need help finding that point of equilibrium? The season of teshuvah, with all those hours of prayer, gives us an annual opportunity to lay our hopes before God—the God within—about where and how to strike that balance. “Hope to YHWH. Let your heart be firm and bold, and hope to YHWH.” In prayer we can share our hopes with God, especially hope for the strength to make needed changes in our lives. It’s a process, not easy or quick, and it starts with hope.
About six hundred years ago, the rabbi and philosopher Joseph Albo (1380–1444, Spain) described the relationship between prayer and hope in remarkably similar terms:
[One] should hope that God in . . . compassion and mercy will make [one’s] way straight, will deliver [one] from harm, and will choose what is good and suitable for [one] by putting in [one’s] . . . heart to choose the good and reject the evil. . . . [This kind of] hope is fulfilled through prayer. . . . The Psalmist alludes to this when [saying] . . . , “Hope to YHWH! Let your heart be firm and bold, and hope to YHWH” (Ps. 27:14). This shows that hope is the cause of strength, and that strength is a cause for more hope . . . the two mutually reacting upon each other.36
As I see it, prayer and the exploration of our hopes lead us to discover the choices God has put before us, but choosing between the right path and the wrong path lies in our hands. Prayer helps us discern one from the other and gives us strength to continue down the right road—or, if necessary, abandon our errant ways.
1Out of the depths I call You, O YHWH. 2O YHWH, listen to my cry; let Your ears be attentive to my plea for mercy. 3If You keep account of sins, O YHWH, who will survive? 4Yours is the power to forgive so that You may be held in awe. 5I hope to YHWH, my being hopes, and I hope for [YHWH’s] word. 6I am more eager for YHWH than watchmen for the morning, watchmen for the morning. 7O Israel, hope for YHWH; for with YHWH is steadfast love and great power to redeem. 8It is [YHWH] who will redeem Israel from all their iniquities.37
Like Psalm 27, Psalm 130 holds a special place in the seasonal liturgy. Many communities recite this hope-laden psalm in daily morning services between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Mishnah notes that in ancient times this psalm of hope was recited during public fasts prescribed to alleviate drought.38 Today, its frequent inclusion in the Rosh Hashanah afternoon ceremony (Tashlikh) of throwing bread crumbs into a body of water to symbolically rid ourselves of sin is yet another expression of the hope to start the new year with a clean slate.39 The similarity between the central themes of the High Holy Days and Psalm 130 could not be more clear: Both emphasize the prayerful plea for God’s forgiveness and the resounding hope for lenient judgment.
It’s worth noting that Psalm 130 has spoken to not only Jewish worshippers. Known in Latin as De Profundis (From the Depths), this psalm has been counted by the Catholic Church among its seven penitential psalms since the sixth century. And from Bach and Boulanger to Dowland and Dupré, dozens of composers have set it to music.
Various medieval and modern commentators have also pointed to its many expressions of hope. In the Middle Ages, it served as a declaration of the Jewish people’s unwillingness to relinquish their hope for redemption amid centuries of exile and persecution.
The horrors of his lifetime certainly colored Bible scholar and philosopher Rabbi David Kimchi’s commentary on Psalm 130. Kimchi (1160–1235, France) lived during a period of expulsions throughout France, Europe’s first blood libel (in Blois, France, 1171), and the Third Crusade (1189–92), which unleashed massacres against the Jews of England that gave rise to the self-immolation of 150 Jews in York to avoid slaughter or forced baptism.
Beginning with the idea that “the depths” represent exile, Kimchi writes that “this psalm is said by all pious Jews in exile.” The expression “I hope for YHWH” refers to “God’s promise to redeem me from exile.” Kimchi was also a grammarian: Thus he notes that “hope” (yacheil) in verse 7 is an imperative, as if to order “Israel to hope that God will redeem it from exile because of God’s steadfast love.” How do we know this is so? “Because,” he says, “God already redeemed you many times, from Egypt and Babylonia and from many difficult straights. So God will redeem you from this exile too.”40
We can sense in his words the palpable strain of invoking images of God’s earlier acts of redemption to sustain the hope that God’s hand has not lost its redemptive power. Invoking the redemption from Egypt and later from Babylonia continued to sustain Jewish hopes during the travails of life in medieval Europe.
The commentary by Bible scholar, preacher, and kabbalist Bachya ben Asher (1255–1340, Spain) makes a related point. Bachya writes that “all the nations of the world are saying that Israel has no hope.” God, he explains, granted King David (traditionally viewed as author of the Psalms) a vision of Israel’s future exile so that David could help keep his descendants from falling into hopelessness. Noting the psalmist’s use of the Hebrew roots of two different words for hope (tikvah, twice in verse 5, and tochelet, in verses 5 and 7), Bachya avers that “David doubled the words for hope in this psalm to strengthen hope during the periods when Israel would otherwise despair of redemption.”41
More recent commentators on Psalm 130 have tended to read it in terms of an individual’s personal spiritual struggle. The psalmist cries to God from the depths “of despair, of self-doubt, and of existential perplexity,” as the contemporary commentator Jeffrey M. Cohen has put it.42 Avigdor Nebenzahl, a former chief rabbi of the Old City of Jerusalem, notes that one of the words for “hope” in this psalm (kiviti, “I hope”) shares the root of the word for “line,” kav. Nebenzahl explains that this double meaning signifies that we hope our connection to God will be direct, like a line, the shortest distance between two points.43 Moreover, as kabbalists had argued, the relationship between hope and kav—in Kabbalah, the line or ray of light with which creation begins—signifies that hope constitutes the fundamental connection between God and humanity and that hope embodies the royal road to teshuvah.44
To talmudist, philosopher, and revered leader of Modern Orthodoxy Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–93, Belarus and United States), this psalm contains the answer to two of our most radical hopes about teshuvah: that it be fast and durable. First, though teshuvah generally involves an extended process, this may not necessarily be the case. Because God is “steadfast with kindness,” Soloveitchik says, God “can use it to extricate us from the slow process of forgiveness to transform it all at once—like the swift transition from the darkness of the night to the light of the morning.” Second, there is a reason the psalm’s concluding verse, that God “will redeem Israel from all their iniquities,” includes the word “all.” The psalm refers to more than “pardon . . . or the cleansing of sins.” “All” refers to “complete liberation of the soul” and the potential for genuine, permanent change.45
As we’ve seen, hope rests precisely on that capacity to envision a future that improves on the present—for ourselves, for others, and for the world at large.
A close reading of the book of Jonah reveals a similar, and arresting, theme. Through a series of allusions to earlier biblical stories, the book points to changes in the character of God! Specifically, the book subtly charts God’s evolving approach to dealing with disappointment.46
It is not unusual for the Bible to portray God in anthropomorphic ways. In The Personhood of God, Bible scholar and theologian Yochanan Muffs (1932–2009, United States) points to God’s display of a range of human emotions, from anger and frustration to surprise and compassion. The Bible also shows God as a being who develops, Muffs writes: “In the first chapters of Genesis, God emerges as a moral personality who grows and learns through tragedy and experimentation to become a model” for humankind. “The crucial message is that even God makes mistakes and actually learns from them.”47 What better lesson could there be on Yom Kippur for teaching us how to do teshuvah!
Yonah, the prophet Jonah’s Hebrew name, means “dove.” Who can hear about a dove on a boat in the middle of a raging storm without thinking of the Flood, when the dove is first mentioned in the Bible? When the world turned out to be less than perfect, God simply wiped it out and started over again:
Va’yinachem YHWH ki assah et ha’adam ba’aretz va’yitatzev el libo. . . . And YHWH regretted having made humankind on earth. With a sorrowful heart, YHWH said, “I will blot out from the earth humankind whom I created—humans together with beasts, creeping things, and birds of the sky, for I regret that I made them.”48 (Gen. 6:6–7)
No prophets, no hope for repentance, not even pity on the innocent children and animals, just obliteration. God tells Noah of the divine plan, but Noah, the most righteous person of his age, says not a single word to God in response. Why not? Perhaps a God who announces plans to “destroy all flesh under the sky in which there is a breath of life” except for one family and a pair of every animal is not exactly a God who inspires dialogue.
God’s plan to destroy the evil city of Nineveh also echoes the earlier destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the first cities in the Bible singled out for divine wrath. The Hebrew verb la’hafokh, “to overturn,” is used in reference to Sodom and Gomorrah as well as Nineveh. Once again, the evil or sinfulness of a city has come up before God. But, in comparison with the worldwide flood, targeting two specific cities indicates the development of considerable divine restraint. And at least Abraham tries to intercede, even if it proves futile. Note too Abraham’s argument: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” (Gen. 18:25). The argument rests purely on justice, with no appeal to mercy or to the possibility of teshuvah.
Now, when Jonah explains to God why he fled, adding, “for I knew that You are a gracious God and compassionate, long-suffering and abounding in mercy and repenting of evil” (4:2),49 he is paraphrasing Exodus 34:6–7, where God’s merciful attributes first find expression: following the Golden Calf incident. Those attributes form a key refrain in our Yom Kippur liturgy—YHWH, YHWH el rachum v’chanun . . . (YHWH, YHWH, God, merciful and compassionate). God (and some say Moses) spoke these words after Moses repaired the shattered relationship between God and the Children of Israel. God had threatened to destroy this stiff-necked, backsliding people and make a new covenant with Moses; turning down the offer, Moses shrewdly argued that God’s credibility in Egyptian eyes would suffer if the Israelites disappeared. And so, God yields to human persuasion, spares the Israelites, and in the process moves beyond the paradigm in which disappointment spells annihilation. God develops the capacity for mercy.
But, again, still not a whisper from God or Moses about the potential for teshuvah.
Yet, by the conclusion of Jonah, when the people of Nineveh change their evil ways, God happily gives up the plan to overturn the city: “Va’yinachem ha-Elohim al ha’ra’ah asher diber la’a’sot la’hem, v’lo assah. And God repented of the evil, which [God] spoke of doing to them; and did not do it” (Jon. 3:10).50
Finally, God’s actions spontaneously display the compassion that previously resulted from Moses’ artful persuasion. Now, God knows that people deserve a chance for teshuvah. In a complete reversal of roles, now God must teach compassion to the stiff-necked prophet Jonah, who demands the obliteration of a sinful people.
The key word is va’yinachem, God “repented” or “regretted” the planned destruction.51 In the story of the Flood, va’yinachem denotes God’s regret for the creation of life and signals its impending annihilation. In Jonah, va’yinachem describes God’s capacity for mercy based on the recognition that change, that teshuvah, is always possible.
To underscore that point, a ninth-century midrash makes an astounding comment: Who was the king of Nineveh? Pharaoh! God resurrected him from the Red Sea and gave him another chance to do teshuvah!52 This midrash contains one of Judaism’s most profound statements of hope that human beings can change their ways.
So, what we likely have in the book of Jonah is either a short history of God’s evolving response to disappointment in humanity or a succession of evolving reconstructions of how human beings have understood God’s nature. In either case, if we are created in God’s image, I believe the goal for us is to arrive at a point at which we too can learn to restrain our more primitive impulses toward those who disappoint us and give them a chance to change their ways. If God learns to hope that those who have disappointed us can change, so can we. Our enemies need not always remain enemies. To act in a godly way is to hope that others can do teshuvah, just as we hope to turn ourselves.
As we’ve seen in this chapter, the process of teshuvah embodies the hope that we can change and Judaism’s methodology for personal transformation, for allowing the divine image we bear to exert greater influence on our behavior. Indeed, the name of God revealed to Moses at the burning bush, Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh, “I will be what I will be” (Exod. 3:14), epitomizes God’s capacity for change: God will be what God will be implies that God is not static, but rather dynamic, changing, evolving.53 Appropriately, this name of God makes its only liturgical appearances on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.54
Thus, as I see it, our ability to be what we will be derives from our creation in the divine image and God’s ability to be what God will be. Created in the divine image, we share God’s capacity to evolve. Past and present need not define who we will be. Hope inhabits an open future.
To help us return to our old/new better selves, to allow that divine image within to shine forth more brightly, Judaism prescribes a time of year for introspection, prayer, and special rituals corresponding to the period when Moses ascended Mount Sinai for the second time and returned with a new set of tablets to replace the ones he smashed following the Golden Calf incident. Each year, that season of Elul, Rosh Hashanah, and Yom Kippur reminds us that we too have a second chance, as did our ancestors who lost their spiritual way in the desert. What was that calf our ancestors worshipped if not a seriously misplaced, unworthy hope?
Prayer, a primary component of teshuvah, affords us an opportunity to share our deepest hopes with the One of Being, to determine if they are truly worthy and to embrace better hopes if ours prove wanting. The blasts of the different shofar calls are not the same—the calls change, and so can we. The God of the book of Jonah seems a lot more compassionate than the God of the Flood. God can change, and so can we.
Two years before he was killed in the Holocaust, the great Hasidic scholar and teacher Issakhar Solomon Teikhthal (1885–1945, Hungary and Czechoslovakia) composed a teaching for the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. He gave it this title: “God Only Forgives Those Who Hope for God’s Forgiveness.”55 Teshuvah requires effort and honesty, but it starts with the hope that change is really possible.